About a week and a half ago, I attended the May 2023 Auto Brunch event in St Ives. This is my favorite Sydney cars and coffee event, and I hadn’t had a chance to attend this year. Last time was November last year. Even though it was threatening rain, it was still a great turn out. This event always has a few nice surprises...
I recently bought an additional set of W124 Gullideckel wheels for my 300TE. The wheels on my car look quite good, but the price was reasonable and its good to have a spare set. I have lots of spare W126 wheels, but they use a different offset. I like how the factory wheels look on the wagon, so I have no plans to swap...
Today I attended a MBCNSW event dubbed the Longroof Long Lunch. I wasn’t actually planning to attend a car club event today, but due to the torrential rain forecast for this weekend, I ended up with a free morning at the last minute. Despite the weather forecast, all the torrential rain fell overnight, leaving both days quite nice. The premise of the event...
Last night was the monthly MBCNSW night drive. This month was a repeat of one of the best drives we did last year. The route takes some of my favorite driving roads in Northern Sydney – nice and twisty with almost no traffic. The weather leading up to the drive had been excellent, but heavy rain is forecast for this weekend. A perfect opportunity...
I’m currently in Las Vegas, USA for a work event. The event starts tomorrow so I had some time to get acclimatized to the time zone, and a buffer in case of any flight delays. While most things in America have become very expensive in the last couple of years, self service junkyards are still very affordable. This is far preferable to the overpriced...
The Becker Mexico Cassette is the radio most often associated with Mercedes-Benz cars of the 1970s. At least in Australia, it would progressively become standard in the various Mercedes-Benz models until the end of 1978. There were a few different varieties of this radio over the years, the instructions below are from an 370 M series radio, originally fitted to my 1977...
Like a lot of wagons and hatchbacks, the 124 wagon uses gas struts to hold up the tailgate. Unlike most vehicles, these are completely hidden in the structure of the car. I understand this was done both for aesthetic reasons as well as crash safety. My 300TE tailgate struts had started to fail. The tailgate would mostly stay up, but randomly it would slam...
Today I joined an informal group of S124 owners for a technical day. There was an expert in these cars visiting from Victoria, so it was an opportunity for every to get together and get some help on various projects on S124s. We were not off to a great start as there was torrential rain, so the original venue of somebody’s house was not...
The March 2023 night drive route was another new one. We try to rotate them around the city, so this one ventured south. The route started at McDonalds Heathcote, before venturing south on the Princes Highway (not motorway) and then turning onto Appin road before finishing up at the Campbelltown Chubby Buns burger truck. This is a different Chubby buns location to the...
I have been in the process of installing a Becker Grand Prix 1402 in my 1990 300TE. This is the model of radio it came with, although this particular radio is not original to this car. In the first installment, I sourced and tested the Becker 1402 and removed the Sony Xplod. In part two, I wired in the right connectors for the...
Yesterday, I started installing a Becker 1402 in my 1990 300TE. This was the radio it was sold with, and the same radio I have in my 1987 560SEC. I had removed the old Sony and inspected the wires, plus fixed my broken Hazard light switch. This morning I looked up the wiring colours for the Sony online. The wiring in the car has...
I purchased my 1990 Mercedes 300TE with a modern Sony Xplod CD player. It was a fairly low end model that sounded pretty bad and looks really out of place in the W124 dash. The passengers front speaker was not working, adding to the poor sound. The S124 has very silly speakers in the rear, one of the few design flaws in...
Since purchasing my 300TE, I haven’t been happy with the operating temperature. It hasn’t overheated, but it was running hotter on days in the mid to high 20s than I would like to see it. I want to be able to rely on the car on days well into the 40C range. My mechanic had suggested that the fan clutch be changed. I had...
Today I attended the monthly Machines and Macchiatos event in Terrey Hills. Last time I was able to attend was October 2022, when I took my DS. Today is a swelteringly hot day of almost 35C, much more suitable for a car with air conditioning. I don’t think I’ve taken my 250SE to one of these events before, so I brought it along. ...
Today I joined the MBCNSW for a drive to the Australian Motorlife Museum. The museum is located in Kembla Grange, near Dapto. It primarily focuses on pre war cars, motorbikes and automotive memorabilia and there are over 100 vehicles on display. I had previous visited the museum in 2018. I was looking forward to a return visit as the collection does change, and there is...
This last week my 250SE has been at the workshop having an alternator upgrade. Back in 2020, my alternator gave up, and I replaced it with a rebuilt 35A alternator. Ever since then, that alternator has struggled to charge the car. It would charge the battery when driving along during the day, without any accessories. But as soon as the A/C was...
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